By: Jessily Jones
In an interview promoting his new film Us, director Jordan Peele was asked, “What is the scariest thing about yourself?” When Peele replied, he reflected on his ‘privileged life’ of growing up financially stable, never being hungry, and receiving an education. He then turned to face the darker side of his reality, admitting that he has forgotten that the middle class life he lived was made at the expense of others’ sufferings. Peele really wanted this message in Us to be directed at the United States, whose “founding” and establishing came at the expense of Native Americans and African slaves. “We have an ability to cover up what is uncomfortable to face about ourselves,” Peele commented, referring to the country. Since then, the United States has had a knack of covering the ugly truths of history and today that us Americans wouldn’t be proud to admit. In Us, Peele has his viewers engage in a horror film where the main character, Adelaide Wilson, has her comfortable life flipped upside down from a truth the audience is unaware about, until the end, and she still manages to retain her lie, due to her privilege.
Class and privilege are two of many topics some Americans do not like to discuss, especially involving themselves. The more someone possesses of class and privilege, the more they stray away from those at the bottom, who have nothing – and these gaps between classes are substantial. Regardless of whichever class one comes from, they wouldn’t be able to understand either the luxury, or deprivation that the other classes experience, unless they changed their class.
In Us, movie, Peele wanted to make apparent the theme of class and privilege that occurs in America by using the division of Adelaide and Red as an example. The scenes in Us that prevail the examples of the distinguishment is the final fight scene, and the deleted scene of the two dancing as teenagers. The reason for including the deleted scene in this analysis is to further show the difference between the women, as it only had few clips inserted in the middle of the final fight scene. The deleted scene is on YouTube, and the scene is recommended to watch for entertainment and for better understanding of this analysis.
After Adelaide makes her journey down the tunnel, she finds Red in a classroom with her back turned, holding scissors. In contrast to Adelaide gripping the bar in an attack position, Red begins to approach Adelaide in a very elegant fashion, slowly pacing, retaining eye contact with Adelaide. During this time, we began to see those clips of the deleted dance scene intertwined into this scene. It reflects back to their dance as teens, as they danced separately, with Adelaide in control of her body and Red’s. Then, as adults, as they face each other in rivalry rather than synchronicity, Adelaide is no longer in control of Red, “Two becoming one,” as Adelaide mentioned earlier in the movie is no more. After decades of Red being forced to live a life that wasn’t hers, now was her time to take back her power. This premise can be supported from Mary Pattillo, who said, “African Americans must compete solely on what each individual has been able to accomplish, and how each has performed.” With the tethered population under her control, she had been able to rise from below and face her clone. Although they included bits of the deleted dance into the final fight, dancing is what brought them a somewhat common ground. As it taught Adelaide how to express herself in the new world, it kept Red’s remaining sanity and also taught her how to express herself, but rather express her pain. While these two scenes coincide, we’ll focus on the meaning behind the dance clips and the deleted now, then finish with the rest of the fight.
“If it weren’t for you, I never would’ve danced at all,” Red croaked. As the scene opened, an adolescent Adelaide entered on a stage where down below, Red bear-crawls to the center of the hall. While Red performs in darkness, Adelaide has a single spotlight on her. While Adelaide, in her gorgeous tutu, dances elegantly with her hands in the air, Red has a ruffled tutu, a messier hair-bun, and dances such as a child taught themselves (which is true), to the point of dancing animalistically. Although both young women are expected the same performance, it is of no surprise that Adelaide’s costumes, choreography, and performance will always be better. In this deleted scene that managed to make clips into the final fight, Peele expresses through this scene the existence of privilege in America.
While many are aware what “white privilege” is, rather than bringing back the race theme from his previous film Get Out, Peele rather shows a general metaphorical privilege divide between the middle and lower class. While this theme is clearly present at other times throughout the film, it feels as if these scenes tell the most of how the Adelaide and Red’s switch between classes mostly affected their privileges. Since the switch of the two characters, they were reborn into a new life and new class, with Adelaide coming into a class of food, support, and freedom, she was able to lead a productive life, whereas Red was wrongfully placed in a life of the opposite, surrounded by dull, tether clones who feast on raw rabbits. When comparing this to separate classes between black Americans, according to “Class Differences in Racial Attitudes: A Divided Black America?,” the ones who received government efforts were able to “experience unprecedented upward mobility,” leading more successful more lives, making enough to move out of the harsher neighborhoods. However, the ones without the privileged aid, remained lacking of education and retaining lower paying jobs, remaining stuck in the cycle of poverty. From this information, matching the faceless dancers to their class value, we see that despite if the lower class works just as hard, or even more than the middle class, due to the given privileges of the middle class, and the neglected lower class, the middle class will shine over the lower class, who will continue to fall, as Red did at the end of their performances.
Returning back to their fight, as Red grapples Adelaide, she sits her down on a desk, scissor’s beneath Adelaide’s jaw. During the first chance to kill Adelaide, the lighting shows a light on Red’s face, and Adelaide’s face undetectable. From the position statement of the side frame, it looks as if Red is the teacher, and Adelaide is the student, suddenly learning of all the pain and insanity she brought Red, simply through the ferocious eye contact. After further physical exchanges, Red pushes Adelaide down and retreats out to the hall.
As Adelaide staggers to attack Red, she grunts, cries, and charges Red, opposite of her adolescent past being featured, who moves delicately. Red on the other hand, unlike her teenage self, moves delicately in the darkened hallway. In regards to the representing classes prior, it seems like Adelaide had too comfortable in her life above, that she reverts back to her true tether nature when brought back, while Red moves comfortably in her space she has grown accustomed to.
The end of the fight leads the women to a bunk room, where Adelaide impales Red with her bar. Settling her down against the foot of a head, Adelaide holds her rival’s face as Red spazzes uncontrollably. Looking glumly at Red, blood in her mouth, Red whistles the same tune as she did when entering the funhouse years ago. This could be her way of concluding the cycle of control and pain she endured for decades, while she lost her soul because of Adelaide years ago, she now loses her body. In sneering anger, Adelaide wraps her handcuffed wrists around Red, killing her, releasing a series of noises that transcend from screaming, to croaking, snarling, to grunting, turning inhuman for some moments. Upon unhandling the body, Adelaide maniacally laughs. With shadow covering her entire face, her laugh makes her look especially creepy, seeming like she’s the villain despite defeating the harm. When she hears a noise in the lockers, she flashes a stern look before approaching weakly. To her relief, she finds her son Jason, and escapes the lower class.
From this instant leads the ending scene, where the Wilsons escape Santa Cruz with Adelaide driving their new family car, an ambulance truck. In the last moments of the film, audiences discover the truth about Adelaide originally being the tether clone who switched herself for Red, the original Adelaide. Reminiscing on this dark history, she looks to her son, who stares strongly at her, almost in disgust at the truth he has come to piece together himself. Looking away from Jason, she once again celebrates another victory against Red, and the tethered life with a smirk, as Jason places his Chewbacca mask on his face, not only concealing himself, but also the horrid truth. Fading from his face, the camera shot follows the ambulance driving in the countryside, panning northwest eventually to all the tethered people in a line, hand in hand for miles. As this is the replication of the 1986 movement “Hands Across America,” despite Red’s intentions to make herself and her lower class seen and heard, the movement will ultimately provide no end to injustice, just as the original movement.
When reflecting upon the film, it is valid to feel sympathy for Red, and anger for Adelaide. Instead of replacing herself, Adelaide could’ve escaped and made herself a better life outside the underground, yet young Adelaide couldn’t understand the concept of duality, but of singularity. She had felt that in order for her to be successful, her counterpart had to suffer in her place, as she did previously. From this unsettling decision, Adelaide grew up in a supportive care system that led her to be successful, while Red remained at the bottom, forgotten. Jordan Peele said that his privilege as a middle class American had made him forget who suffers from his success, and those who look into Us beyond the red suits and rabbits, would also see who suffers when others are successful.
Sources
- Pattillo, Mary E. Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013. pp. 1.
- Hwang, Sean-Shong, Kevin M. Fitzpatrick, and David Helms. “Class Differences in Racial Attitudes: A Divided Black America?” Sociological Perspectives 41, no. 2 (1998): 367. doi:10.2307/1389482.
Jessily's Film Assessment 